Elaborate scheme
A former Jacksonville Jaguars employee who stole over $22 million from the organization has been sentenced to six and a half years in federal prison. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida announced on Tuesday that U.S. District Judge Henry L. Adams also ordered 31-year-old Amit Patel to pay full restitution to the Jaguars. Patel was pleaded guilty to wire fraud and illegal monetary transaction on December 14, 2023.
Patel engaged in quite the embezzlement scheme from September 2019 to February 2023, when he was finally fired. As Financial Planning and Analysis Manager, Patel administered the team’s virtual credit card (VCC) program. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he invented “hundreds of purchases and transactions with no legitimate business purpose.” He then created accounting files with fake entries to hide his fraud.
Among other methods Patel used to mask his manufactured transactions, he:
“….identified legitimate reoccurring VCC transactions, such as catering, airfare, and hotel charges, and then duplicated those transactions; he inflated the amounts of legitimate reoccurring VCC transactions; entered fictitious transactions that sounded plausible, but that never actually occurred; and moved legitimate VCC charges from upcoming months into the month of the accounting file that was immediately due to the accounting department.”
Patel then used the money generated from the fraudulent transactions to fuel his gambling and luxurious lifestyle. His defense attorney, Alex King, said the bulk of his crimes were the result of a gambling addiction and that he will need access to treatment while in prison.
Gambling wasn’t all of it
Patel told the judge that he started gambling while in high school and was “embarrassed and ashamed” for what he has done.
“I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on how I ended up here,” he said. “I grew up knowing right from wrong and I know my conduct was wrong.”
He added that he thought the next big bet could solve his problems, but he just continued to lose and “Before I knew it, I was buying and selling everything I could to make some money.”
The prosecution did not disagree that Patel has a gambling problem, but it also provided evidence that he used his ill-gotten gains for much more than gambling. He bought a $40,000 Tesla Model 3, a pickup truck, a country club membership, a $265,000 condo, personal travel for himself and friends, often on private jets and with stays at luxury hotels, cryptocurrency and NFTs, a $95,000 watch, and much more.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Coolican, who sought a seven-year prison term, wrote in a sentencing memo that Patel “undoubtedly loves to gamble and lost the bulk of the money that he stole doing it … But he also likes to live well and have other people pay for it.”
Image credit: Melissa Hillier via Flickr